Why everybody listens when Jack Ma talks (it’s not just because he’s rich)

Screengrab of Jack Ma at World Economic Forum.

As a video producer for Tech in Asia, my job these days entails a lot of listening to tech CEOs and entrepreneurs blather about their products, searching for pearls of wisdom that I can condense into video form. I’ve made videos using clips of everyone from Min-Liang Tan to Elon Musk, but one thing that’s become abundantly clear from tracking our viewership data is that nobody gets as much attention from the Asia tech audience as Jack Ma.

The obvious reason for that is that he’s rich and famous, but there’s more to it than that. There are plenty of tech CEOs who are rich and famous – Musk, Zuckerberg, Lei Jun, etc. – but none of their videos perform as consistently well as Jack Ma’s.

The truth is that when he speaks publicly, Jack Ma does some things few other figures in the tech industry do. Most entrepreneurs won’t ever get access to the kind of stages Jack Ma routinely walks out on, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn some valuable lessons from the way Mr. Ma presents himself when he’s speaking in public.

1. Speaking slowly and clearly

If you’ve only watched Jack Ma speak in English, you might be inclined to think that his presentation style – slow, deliberate speech with numerous lengthy pauses – is just a byproduct of the fact that English is his second language. But nothing could be further from the truth – in fact, he uses the same deliberate style even in his Chinese speeches.

Everything about Jack Ma’s speaking style is carefully tailored to maximize audience understanding. He speaks relatively slowly, so that everybody who’s listening can keep up. He pauses often after particular points of emphasis to give the audience time to process and retain what he’s just said. And he uses relatively simple language, steering well clear of the industry jargon and technobabble that often plagues the speech of other executives.

The end result is that almost anyone – even somebody who doesn’t work in tech and isn’t interested in entrepreneurship – could listen to a Jack Ma speech and come away understanding what he said. You won’t ever hear him going deep into Alibaba’s tech. He claims that’s because he doesn’t understand computers well (and perhaps that’s true), but it’s also probably because his talks are designed to have more universal appeal.

In other words: keep it simple, stupid. That’s what Jack Ma does.

2. Using repetition for emphasis

One rhetorical technique Ma uses frequently is repetition. Consider, for example, this video, which is one of our most popular Jack Ma snippets. When talking about hiring, he says that the best people are always those you train yourself. Then, in the very next sentence, he repeats the same sentiment with only slightly different wording.

That repetition isn’t a mistake. It’s a very intentional speaking technique. By repeating the same message in a slightly different way, he’s hammering home his point with the audience, emphasizing its importance and giving them additional time to digest its meaning.

Obviously, it’s possible to take this technique too far – you can’t repeat everything you say without your audience being bored to tears. But using repetition occasionally emphasizes the key points in your talk and makes sure that everyone in the audience has a little extra time to digest them before you move on to the next topic.

3. Embracing humor

Another thing you’ll notice about Jack Ma’s speaking style is that he’s pretty funny. He loves to make jokes at his own expense, often talking about how poorly he understands technology and how he isn’t particularly smart. He constantly retells stories about being the only person in his friend group rejected for jobs at KFC and at the local police station. He’s even publicly made fun of his own looks.

4. Talking with his hands and his body

5. Employing analogies

6. Taking strong positions